...before iPads and DVD players and interactive video games...before television..(!) ...children played with toys; (often stationary items which had no mobility at all without assistance.) I remember well playing with little hard rubber cars; making elaborate roadways in the dirt. I remember making "cookies" from pieces of soil cracked and curled after drying up following a nice rain. And climbing trees. And giving each other rides in the wheelbarrow. I remember my arms up, tightly clinging to the sides of a home-made "swing"..an oval metal tub, strung with ropes from the handle at each end onto the tree branch, as my siblings pushed the tub to and fro. I remember playing drop-the-handkerchief, kick-the-can, hide-and-go-seek, leap frog, Annie- Annie-Over....
My little sister and I had a doll buggy just like this. Actually, it was probably hers. It provided us many, many hours of playtime. And doll cradles and dolls...pre-Barbie dolls, mind you! Baby dolls, they were. How well I remember that wonderful smell of a brand new doll..a mix of latex and new fabrics. Even the hair had a distinctive smell. Bride dolls were the coveted dolls then. Only older, more responsible girls received bride dolls...you had to "graduate into" bride dolls. First, you received very large, plump baby dolls. Then, you might get a Shirley Temple doll, with different outfits, even! But, the apex...and, often your 'last' doll (before you out-grew dolls), was usually a beautiful, elaborate bride doll complete with wedding gown and veil, crisp petticoats, satin and lace fabrics, strands of pearls, rhinestone tiaras. The bride doll was usually more for display than for play, and often a bittersweet event because, not only did you know there would be more dolls for you under the Christmas tree, but, as well, it silently signaled a rite of passage: that you were now to be grown up. (Like 'happy-ever-after" stories, I guess. Life, as it were, 'ended' at 'brides.')
My sister, six years older than myself, had a bride doll. I used to sneak her doll out to play with when she wasn't home. One day I was rushing through a door to quickly return the doll when the door slammed on its rubber arm and ripped it completely off, scattering tiny little multi-colored rubber stuffing pieces everywhere!
Back then it must have still been okay for kids to clobber each other in anger. Yup. Must have been.
That was before iPads. And DVD players. And interactive video games. Even before television.
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